Why Trust Is More Complicated Than You Think
Last week, I asked you to stop thinking about trust and start thinking about risk.
Not simply whether someone is putting something at risk by depending on you, but exactly what they are risking, how much of it is exposed, and what happens to them if something goes wrong.
That matters because once you know what someone is putting in your hands, another question becomes unavoidable:
How do they decide whether you are safe enough to hold it?
We tend to answer that question with terms like trustworthy, reliable, or dependable. Useful words, but not particularly useful explanations. They describe the conclusion without telling us how someone got there.
The brain needs more information than that.
If I am going to depend on you, I need to know whether you will act in my interest. I need to know whether you are capable of doing what I need you to do. I need enough evidence to predict what you are likely to do next. And I need to know whether you have what it takes to be there when I actually need you.
Those are four different calculations.
Your Character. Your Competence. Your Consistency. Your Capacity.
We often roll all four into one word: trust. But they answer very different questions, and a relationship can be strong in three and dangerously weak in the fourth.
You can be completely honest and terrible at what someone is depending on you to do. You can be extraordinarily capable and impossible to predict. You can have the best intentions in the world and repeatedly fail to follow through. You can be honest, capable, and reliable but simply not have the time, resources, energy, or reach to give someone what they need when they need it.
That can happen with a client, an employee, a colleague, a friend, a partner, or anyone else who is depending on you to protect something they value.
Being trustworthy in one way does not make you trustworthy in all four. A weakness in any one of them creates risk.
And that is why all four matter.
Once you understand what someone has entrusted to you, Character, Competence, Consistency, and Capacity help explain where that trust can break...and where you need to make the relationship Safer.
Over the next four essays, I’ll take them one at a time.